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Friday, February 19, 2016

Saving Tips: Check Your Tire Pressure

This morning on my drive to work the "Low Tire" light came on in my car. And it made me realize that it had been a while since I had had the tire pressures checked and gave me the inspiration to make a quick Saving Tips post about it. So today's Saving Tip:

CHECK YOUR TIRE PRESSURE

One of the easiest ways to improve your car's fuel efficiency and thus spend less on gas is to make sure that the tires are properly inflated. I'm no physics expert but the basic principles governing this concept is that the less air in the tire the more friction and drag is created which in turn makes your vehicle work harder to propel. If you want to check it yourself but don't know how much tire pressure your car should have try checking the owner's manual but it tends to be around 34-36 PSI, I'm also not a car guy, it might even list it on the tire somewhere. But the easiest way that I've found to do it is to go to basically any car shop and ask them if they can check the tire pressure for you. This is what I did.

On my way home from work I pulled into a Jiffy Lube and asked a worker who was sitting out front if they check the tire pressure for free. The answer has always been yes but I still ask every time just in case. He has me pull up to the empty bay and within about two minutes Johnny had me all taken care of. He found that two tires had 35 PSI, one had 32 PSI, and one was down to 30 PSI. So he topped them all off to make them all an even 35 PSI. And now I'm all good to go. Every time I fill up with gas I enter in all the information into a spreadsheet and track the miles per gallon that I'm getting so I'll be interested to see how much of a difference I see in the MPG trend line now.

I've found that every time you take your car in to get serviced or anything they will always check the tire pressure but if you haven't had it checked in a while I'd encourage you to stop by any car place the next time you're out and have them quickly check the tire pressures for you. It's FREE and, if you choose to stop at a place that looks empty, it will literally take you less than 5 minutes to do.